Is the Inter­net mar­ket­ing indus­try implod­ing? I think it is. But if not, it sure seems like it. In fact, it seems to be a sign of the times.

For exam­ple, we see it with the FTC crack­ing down on mis­lead­ing adver­tis­ers, Visa and Mas­ter­Card clos­ing down mer­chant accounts for forced con­ti­nu­ity billings, and Google per­ma­nently ban­ning adver­tis­ers for rea­sons still unclear but some­how related to the lat­est crackdown.

Harsh? Per­haps. But we can’t say we didn’t see it coming.

Remem­ber, it was about three years ago — wow, has it been three years already? — when my wife, Sylvie Fortin, put out her scathing report, called “Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins.”

It was highly con­tro­ver­sial at the time because peo­ple didn’t expect it. How­ever, since then many mar­keters, blog­gers, jour­nal­ists, dis­grun­tled clients, unpaid affil­i­ates, even social media experts have joined in the cho­rus. Some, qui­etly. Oth­ers, not so quietly.

For instance, copy­writer Ryan Healy ruf­fled a few feath­ers recently by post­ing a scathing report, enti­tled “Inter­net Mar­ket­ing on Life Sup­port,” in which he sin­gled out a few mar­keters for their ques­tion­able, uneth­i­cal, or allegedly ille­gal practices.

One com­menter praised Ryan for his will­ing­ness to name names, and by the same token crit­i­cized my wife for not doing so in her Sins report. In fact, since it was pub­lished, we received a lot of flak for not nam­ing names. I cer­tainly under­stand their cynicism.

So I’m tak­ing this oppor­tu­nity to elab­o­rate on why we chose not to name names.

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The FTC finally pub­lished its revi­sions to the 1980 tes­ti­mo­nial and endorse­ment rules. Some blog­gers, copy­writ­ers, and mar­keters, even lawyers, have talked about this, some­times a lot more elo­quently than me.

It’s obvi­ous the FTC’s intent is to curb, con­trol, and go after those nefar­i­ous flogs (i.e., “fake blogs”), like Google Money and Acai Berry. But the lan­guage is left to be desired and, if not clar­i­fied, can lead to some seri­ous repercussions.

Espe­cially for affil­i­ate marketers.

Based on what I’ve read, I can eas­ily inter­pret “affil­i­ates” and “ven­dors” falling in what the FTC dubs as “endorsers” and “adver­tis­ers.” (Accord­ing to TechCrunch, the FTC has responded and clar­i­fied this some­what, which I will come back to in a moment.)

In its new rul­ings, they make two pow­er­ful points. Points I agree with. At least, in intent. TechCrunch did a great job flesh­ing out the changes and its impli­ca­tions. The most impor­tant of which is the fact that the FTC can fine you $11,000 per infraction.

But these two biggest changes, which also may become prob­lem­atic, are…

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What­ever hap­pened to sales and marketing?

Sim­ple ques­tion, I know. But think about it. How many busi­nesses have you come across lately spout­ing the lat­est and great­est trick, tac­tic, or cashgrab?

You’ve heard of the say­ing, “Hate the game, not the player?” I’ve heard this many times too, and lately I seem to hear it a lot within our industry.

When my wife, Sylvie Fortin, wrote Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins, her premise was sim­i­lar. She said, “Hate the sin, love the sin­ner.” But her rea­son­ing was, she wanted to expose, focus on, and pro­vide alter­na­tive solu­tions to spe­cific prac­tices and behav­iors, with­out fin­ger­point­ing any­one.

How­ever, the more I think about it, the more I’m com­ing to the con­clu­sion that the player wor­ries me more than the game itself. And here’s why…

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Today, Sylvie and I stum­bled onto another bad Inter­net mar­ket­ing sin per­pe­trated by an online mar­keter. This per­son is not as well-​​known, but judg­ing from their style they’re def­i­nitely a stu­dent of some of the top “gurus.”

When we shared this with our plat­inum coach­ing group, a mem­ber sent this amaz­ing “10-​​point ethics check­list,” which he and his employ­ees use in his com­pany as guide­lines in defin­ing if a mar­ket­ing or busi­ness strat­egy is worth doing.

That list is noth­ing short of brilliant.

With his gra­cious per­mis­sion, Dar­rin Clement allowed me to reprint it here for you. I urge you to read it. Go through it when you’re think­ing about imple­ment­ing a new mar­ket­ing or sales tac­tic, or when you’re about to buy into one. It’s that pow­er­ful. Here’s the list…

1. The Golden Rule: Would I want peo­ple to do this to me?
2. The Fair­ness Test: Who might be affected and how? Is this fair to everyone?
3. The ‘What if every­body did this?’ Test: Would I want every­one to do this? Would I want to live in that kind of world?
4. The Truth Test: Does this action rep­re­sent the whole truth and noth­ing but the truth?
5. The Par­ents Test: How would my par­ents feel if they found out about this? What advice would they give me?
6. The Chil­dren Test: Would I be will­ing to explain every­thing about this to my kids and expect them to act in the same way?
7. The Reli­gion Test: Does this go against my religion?
8. The Con­science Test: Does this go against my con­science? Will I feel guilty?
9. The Con­se­quences Test: Are there pos­si­ble con­se­quences of this action that would be bad? Would I regret doing this?
10. The Front Page Test: How would I feel if my action were reported on the front page of my home­town paper?

The long antic­i­pated third and final install­ment of my wife’s shock­ing and highly con­tro­ver­sial exposé, Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins cov­er­ing five more sins, is finally out.

It took a bit longer this time, and Sylvie explains why in the report. She also clears up a lot of mis­con­cep­tions about why she wrote this report. And in fact, this time she did it a lit­tle differently.

This time, she did it on video!

There are sev­eral reasons.

For one, she wanted to save time. Her recent surgery forced her to post­pone writ­ing this sec­tion, and peo­ple were clam­or­ing for it.

Sec­ond, it would also give you a chance to hear her pas­sion, and some­times, her anger. Plus, she ends with a heart­felt plea you def­i­nitely don’t want to miss!

Like parts one and two, she uses strong lan­guage and doesn’t hold back! Your dis­cre­tion is advised.

She exposes the final five sins, i.e., Tele­sem­i­nar Idiots, Brain­less Free­bie Seek­ers, Coach­ing Addicts, Time-​​Sucking Vam­pires, and Slave Own­ers. The video is on the same down­load page of the first two parts. If you haven’t signed up, do it now…

Go now and watch part #3 of Inter​net​Mar​ket​ingSins​.com.

Part #2 of my wife’s shock­ing exposé, Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins cov­er­ing five more sins, is finally out.

It took a bit longer this time, and Sylvie explains why in the report.

Once you read this sec­ond install­ment and some of the shock­ing rev­e­la­tions it makes, you’ll soon under­stand why. Because in it, she exposes some of the more devi­ous, cun­ning, and toxic behav­iors and destruc­tive per­son­al­ity traits we see online today.

(The sec­tion on Cult Lead­ers is pretty fas­ci­nat­ing, too. There’s some pretty harsh stuff in there, and some of it might seem very famil­iar to you.)

But it’s not all doom and gloom. You’ll also be in for a good laugh, too.

Have you ever seen Jeff Fox­wor­thy do his “You might be a Red­neck” skit? Well, Sylvie did her own with lazy mar­keters. And they’re all 100% true. As the out­sourc­ing provider to many mar­keters, she’s seen her fair share of corner-​​cutting tactics.

The report is avail­able on the down­load page of the ini­tial report. If you haven’t signed up already, then I sug­gest that you do.

Go now and down­load part #2 of Inter​net​Mar​ket​ingSins​.com.